Druid Twinking: Hotstuffbaby

07Dec

Well, I told you I wasn’t fully finished with twinking, so here’s some more proof for you. Sorry, I just can’t help but enjoy facing opponents with actual intelligence:

As with Killutiludie yesterday, she’s got some progressing left to do. But, she’s got most of her gear already set aside and just needs to level. There are three instances that I need to run for gear, but the three items I need are all the higher of the drop rates for the specific bosses. [Edit: Progression is done, gear is obtained, twink healing has begun. She’ll typically be seen in her caster gear on the armory, and there are a few pieces that can be upgraded via BoE blues I haven’t manage to get my hands on yet, but there she is. Herbalism should be maxed tonight or tomorrow. Just shy of 1600 hp in bear form, without sacrificing all other stats for stam.]

Hotstuffbaby isn’t mean to kill people, so where Killutiludie ends up with over 100 kills almost every battleground, Hotstuffbaby settles instead for healing more damage over the course of a battle than most of the dps put out. She actually finds herself at the top of the charts at the end more frequently than my hunter does at this point.

Leveling a Druid Twink Through Battlegrounds
Looking back on my previous post you’ll see that leveling in today’s game is pretty well the same for twink as it is for a non-twink. Most of Hot’s leveling since level 10 has come from battleground experience, which makes the process slow sometimes if my entire team feels the need to do solo fighting in midfield or everyone decides that a strong defense is the best offense (and then completely ignores the flag carriers). But when we’re good, we’re friggin’ GOOD! And that’s where the experience really comes rolling in.

Since I’m doing most of her leveling via BG’s there’s some special things to take note of. First off, if flags aren’t getting captured, then you aren’t getting experience in a WSG. You’ll get some when it’s all over regardless of win or lose, but the only way to get experience in WSG in the 19 bracket is from flags being captured. So if you want to level from this method, then do yourself a favor and do your job, which means being part of the team not trying to be superman.

Forget the fact that you’re there to level yourself and do what it takes to help your team succeed.

Gearing a Druid Twink
Gearing a druid depends on what you plan on doing with that druid. From my own personal experience, there are only two types of druid twinks that I have seen in the 19 bracket that actually perform well: healers and flag carriers. I have heard tale of some decent Balance twinks out there, but from what I see it’s always someone with Resto or Feral builds with Resto being significantly more common.

Gearing a Druid twink is a bit easier in some respects to other twinks, and also somewhat harder. The best setup you can have for the druid twink involves a high level rep grind for an offhand item known as the Furbolg Medicine Pouch. You have no chance of getting this item yourself at this level so it requires help from a higher level toon to kill things for you. You also earn that rep at a wonderfully slow 5 points per kill, though there are items you can turn in to get more. I haven’t gone after this item yet myself, though I do have the perfect setup for getting it. Right now I am trying to decide if I want to go with this item for extra hit points or if I would rather go with the Twisted Chanter’s Staff for the boost to Intellect instead.

Right now I’m not sure whether I will need the Stamina more or the Intellect, so only time will tell at this point.

A Druid is about 50/50 on their best in slot gear for twinks between world drops and dungeon loot, and some of their rare drops while being rare also have their highest drop rates located inside specific dungeons. For the druid, Blackfathom Deeps is the location of your best chest piece while Shadowfang Keep is the location for your best weapon if you decide to go for the Medicine Pouch.

Some of the green items you’ll need happen to be among some of the hardest to find though, so be prepared to watch that Auction House pretty close if you’re building a druid. The items themselves aren’t too hard to find, it’s the one with the specific random enchantments on them that you’ll be struggling with.

Playing a Druid Twink
Playing a twink is serious business.

Because of the versatile nature of the druid, there is really a lot that can be put into playing them. Having the ability to switch your role at the drop of a hat is a pretty big deal, even if you don’t necessarily have the best gear for your off-spec roles.

I primarily play Hots as a healer, with crowd control ending up as one of her biggest contributions to actually winning. Sometimes though I have to take on the role of the flag carrier and running around with my big bear butt waving around the screen and relying on someone else to do my healing for me. Right now all of the gear I’ve been building up is centered around healing, but I plan on getting a high Stamina set of gear for when I’m running the flag as well.

Utilizing your versatility is one of the cornerstones of being a Druid twink, so be sure to put that to use when the situation presents itself.

While versatility is your cornerstone, the keystone to your druid twinking is going to be your mobility.

A druid’s mobility is key to everything. You can heal on the move, you can dps (sort of) on the move, you can root (sort of) on the move, and you can move faster than most of the other classes that you’ll be facing as well. These things all combine into one big kick in the teeth for your opponents. Keep your distance when enemies are around and use what spells you can while you’re on the move.

TacticsDefense: When you’re playing defense as a druid you have two primary contributions. First, Entangling Roots/Nature’s Grasp – these spells are going to stop people from being able to move. They can use trinkets or racials (humans and gnomes) to get out of it, but those things are limited and have cooldowns where your Entangling Roots does not. Second, you’re a healer. When you see someone engage one of your fellow defenders, it’s time to start throwing some heals. If they happen to be focused on you then take advantage of your healing there as well and try to heal through whatever they’ve got. If the enemy is focus on you or your teammates, then they aren’t focused on your flag, and that’s a good thing.

If they do manage to get your flag then your main focus should be rooting the flag carrier in place and throwing Moonfire on him when you can to help dps him down. And for the love of Sylvanas, please don’t forget to let people know where the flag carrier is taking the flag: “efc going tun/ramp/gy”.

If you’re trying to heal the flag carrier, then do your team a favor and forget that you have any damaging spells and save your mana for heals and roots.

Offense:
Crowd Control is one of your key traits here, especially if you’re a healer or a bear. You probably don’t have the mana or the spell power to be a true dps powerhouse, so the strongest offense you have to offer is crowd control and healing to help out the ones who do have the ability to pack a punch for you. If your hunter mate is getting his face bashed in by a warrior, then you should probably root the warrior and then throw some heals on that hunter while he repositions to finish up the job.

If you see a rogue running towards a teammate, then tag him with Moonfire and rob him of the ability to use stealth. If a shaman is dropping totems to slow down your team, then feel free to Moonfire his Earthbinding Totem (that one above all others). If someone’s low on health, then don’t hesitate to try to finish them off with Moonfire or Wrath, especially if it’s some form of caster.

A Beautiful Thing:
One last little bit that I’m going to leave with you is in relation to the Night Elf race in particular, though it does apply to the whole race instead of just the druids. Shadowmeld is your best friend. If a Hunter or Warlock sends his pet after you then this is how you get them to drop their agro. When you use Shadowmeld, the pets will lose agro on you and return to doing what their owner told them to. A lot of people aren’t used to actively controlling their pets, so I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve been able to use this to drop the pet agro and then finish the fight without the pet ever even trying to hit me again.

The best time to use this is right before you’re going to heal yourself, or when you’re camping the enemy’s flag spawn. If you pop Shadowmeld and immediately follow it up with your instant cast HoT then your enemy is less likely to notice that his pet isn’t hitting you anymore. It may also make the enemy player target someone else instead of you which allows you to drop back into a healing role.

While the reaction of the player is completely out of your control, it will always drop agro from a pet which might buy you the time you need to heal. There’s nothing stopping the enemy from immediately sending his pet right back to you, but a precious second is a precious second indeed if it means the difference between life and death or victory and defeat.

9 responses to “Druid Twinking: Hotstuffbaby”

I think you meant Faerie Fire to prevent Rogues from stealth. I always use this against Rogues so they cannot do this unless they pop Cloak of Shadows. I forget when Rogues get that ability.

The main Druid I play is Tauren so I don’t have Shadowmeld but I do use Entangling Roots and Hibernate against pets. Hibernate can also be used against Druids that have shifted into Cat or Bear form. I picked up a trinket that absorbs damage, but I don’t you get access to one of those until your 30′ I got it by turning in Marks of Honor. I cannot remember if it was for Arathi Basin or Warsong Gulch.

As you’ve mentioned a Druid you have many ways you can contribute in Battlegrounds the Druids that do well are the ones that regularly use a lot of their abilities. I’ve seen a few Druids that never used their CC or shifted (shakes head) they only healed, naturally they didn’t last long.

FF prevents a rogue from stealthing all together, but Moonfire will while it’s ticking as well. While I do have FF on my action bar, it’s off to the side where Moonfire is always sitting in a prime spot for its spam factor when a FC needs to go down asap, so I tend to rely on Moonfire when combat is near immediate and will use FF if I see one trying specifically to be sneaky. Cloak of Shadows doesn’t come until after the 19 bracket, so no worries on that one. I’ll have another post after I finish getting Hots twinked that will go into detail on all of the spells and such that will cover uses for all of our spells in more detail.

The damage absorbing trinket you’re talking about can be purchased from AB marks, but their absorb value is 0 – 320’ish and the randomness of it makes it pretty bad when it procs the low numbers. I’ve seen that thing proc the 0 damage bubble before which really sucked. Your options for trinkets in the 19 bracket are basically Minor Recombobulator, Arena Grand Master, Insignia of the Horde/Alliance, and BoA trinkets. There might be some JC trinkets too, but I haven’t bothered leveling up that profession yet so I’m not sure on that part. Any bubble is a good bubble, but requiring AB tokens puts them out of reach for a 19 twink.

Yep you’re right about that Moonfire works by the tick. I guess I had read that wrong thinking you meant it blocked it altogether. I have FF bound to the F12 key so I just target and pop that. I usually snare them too. :) I like Moonfire for the ‘Whooshing’ sound it makes and the animation effects it has on the person who gets hammered by it, heh.

I’m a fan of the animation/audio as well, it’s probably one of my favorite spells for that reason. Another reason why I mention Moonfire as the spell for rogues is because it draws their attention to me and that’s something I don’t mind having. I can handle just about any rogue so long as he doesn’t get the drop on me to begin with, and being a healer I almost always have a tank or a dps character following close behind to pick them off for me if needed. The animation of Moonfire also helps draw everyone else’s attention to where that rogue is located and that I’m in the middle of combat over there. It does server multiple purposes.

I will definitely note that if I ever find myself in a situation where I’m fairly sure that I’m going to die then I will tag every class/race I can who is capable of stealing before I go down, and the flag carrier gets hit with FF before anything else when I see them unless a single Moonfire has the potential to kill them.

I snare a lot of people on the druid, and for various reasons. I snare anybody who’s fighting one of my hunters, even if it’s another hunter. I snare any dps caster that I see, and I will snare anyone who’s obviously filling a healing role as well. Even just a half second worth of slowing them down is often enough to be the deciding factor between a win and a loss.

Snares are used a lot by my Druid too if I can assist my teammates I will. I’ve been thinking about making a few twink toons. I’ll definitely make another Druid and am thinking about making an Affliction Warlock too.

How are you finding the twink Battlegrounds? Are people less likely to fight where they aren’t supposed to fight? I’m happy when I’m in battlegrounds where people pay attention to others within our group (or actually listen to suggestions made by others) even when I’m frustrated with people in the Battlegrounds I don’t shout. I’ll make suggestions on possible strats, at times people will actually listen. I do the same when people offer strats. Battlegrounds aren’t 1:1 pvp so some people need to realize that they need to work together in order to be successful, communication is important too. It’s not a one person show. :) At times, I hate BG”s because I’m running with a lot that have that ‘it’s all about me’ mentality but I keep running them because I do love PvP. :)

It really does differ from battle to battle to be quite honest. You still have people that fight in mid, hoping to slay some new twinks that don’t really know what they’re doing yet, and you have some who really only care about their honor points and their kill count so they pay little attention to the flags and overall victory.

Generally speaking though there is definitely a stronger sense of seriousness with people trying to work together and teach those that aren’t especially familiar with it. Some people feel that since they’ve got shoulder/head/leg enchants from yester-expansion that they don’t need your advice, but those are the ones that generally give up on twinking and leave before too long anyway.

I’ll definitely recommend taking a few runs in the twink BG’s to anyone. At the worst you stand to lose 20g from turning it off and on, but if you enjoy PvP then you don’t want to miss out on the twink battlegrounds where things actually get done and a team pulls together to take on an enemy far greater than even Arthas and his spiffy little sword.

Coming back to this post to say, I created a few toons on a new server; Silvermoon. Yes, I’m an altoholic too. I actually had to delete a few since I was at the limit of toons I can have.

Anyway, I made another druid, Leafos. She’s supposed to be my twink but who knows. I might end up making another one. I’ll definitely be checking out your other website to see what’s going on in the twink world.

The twinking world is in full bloom right now, at least in the Ruin battlegroup.

I’m going to bump my druid up to the 29 bracket since I really love AB too much to keep all of my toons in the 19 bracket and I absolutely love the taste of Starfire crits in the evening /nom.

I’m leaning towards taking my 31 Rogue up to the 39 and locking her down there since I don’t really feel like leveling anyone else up to 80 just yet, or I might just delete her to make room for another twink. I haven’t decided on that one yet, but she’s just sitting there and that annoys me.

I have a shaman that I’m thinking about the 39 bracket with as well since massive windfury crits always make me smile, the hunter I’m considering deleting to make room for a 19 Rogue or Paladin, and the new mage who hit 19 last night will be staying in the 19s for some time if not forever.

Come by and take a look, and don’t forget to keep an eye on Cyn’s new twink site as well: Green Tinted Goggles